It's one thirty in the morning here in Puerto Vallarta. I was planning on procrastinating more with this blog entry, but awake suddenly to a blast of thunder rolling off the ocean and into the windows of my little studio on the mountainside.
There's an immense, metallic sound to it that has a different ring than those great storms of yesteryear on my childhood home in Verdent Valley. It sounds rather like in those old radio shows, where they shook a big sheet of metal to create the sound of thunder--but on a very grand and real scale. It is accompanied by the roar of tropical rain against the roof. As I run up the cement stairs to my door and yank it open eagerly, I am astonished to see the sheer amount of water pouring from the darkness above. There is a small white water river in the middle of the sloped cobblestone street, and I can hardly see the opposite houses just a short distance away. I had always suspected the thick pvc pipes sticking out of the second level apartments here to be a tad excessive, but as I watch the water shooting from them at high velocity into the river that used to be a street, I am now aware of my former ignorance. To my further surprise, I hear a motor. Out of the watery gloom passes a man on a motorbike, head bowed against the lashing rain, body drenched. Its a wonder he can see where he's going. I turn back inside and close the door. The downpour seems, to my unaccustomed Canadian ears, to threaten caving in the corrugated fiberglass roof above my stairs. I return to my bed to wait out the storm, unable to sleep in the din of sound, and take it as a sign to quit procrastinating....
Just weeks before, I had experienced what could be described as the opposite of this scene. My 1981 Monte Carlo t-top (herein referred to as "Carlito") had successfully made it all the way from Canada to the Mexican border. With the help of a certain good-looking Mexican companion who I had arranged to meet up with in Oregon, the border crossing went smooth and Carlito now breezed through miles of territory, which formerly I had only seen fleeting glances of through a jet window. The Baja California wine route, from Ensenada to Tecate, is a beautiful drive but could not prepare us for what we were to see next.
The first hints were oddly rounded boulders dotting the desert hills on either side of the highway. These seemed strange enough, but when we finally entered the heart of what I now know is referred to as "La Rumorosa," my mouth dropped open in awe. Surrounding us was an landscape that seemed to belong in the far-fetched imagination of a science fiction writer. The mountainous terrain was comprised entirely of rounded boulders and strange looking desert plants, mile upon mile of this dizzying scene which left one wondering just how the hell anyone managed to build a winding highway through any of it.
Perhaps the strangest thing of all was the energy of this place. It truly is a world, a reality of its own and one that carries an ancient and knowing feel. Although there were never any signs of movement or life out there, it seemed that we were constantly under the scrutiny of a discerning, watchful eye. This was the kind of place where unexplainable things happen, where your eyes play tricks on you and your mind becomes aware of the limitations of its own awareness of reality. When we finally wound our way through the last valley and swooped down onto a flat plain in the fading purple light of the dying day, there was a period of silence in which our brains struggled to make sense of what we just saw and felt. The only conclusion I could come to was that Mexico is a more beautiful and dynamic place than I could have imagined, and this was just the beginning....
